of
So by the time we got back to the barn to pack for the trip to Montana, we were yawning so hard our jaws cracked. We were stretched out on the cot in our clothes and almost asleep when the rounds started punching through the Caddy. First, I heard the pops and tinkle of glass as a headlight was shot out, then the following echoes of the rifle's fire. Then the flat slaps as the shooter ran half a dozen rounds into the body of the Caddy. The sniper hadn't bothered with a suppressor this time and had brought a larger bore assault rifle. It sounded larger, maybe an M-14 or an AK. I found a crack to peer through. A dark van was parked to block the road on a rise just out of pistol range, semi-automatic gunfire pouring out of the dark interior through the open side door. They had probably cut the fences so Tom Ben and hands would have their hands full horsing his bulls out of the highway.
'Some son of a bitch is shooting holes in my Cadillac,' I said. 'And if we go outside, he's gonna shoot holes in us,' I said, unlocking the foot locker. I grabbed the Mini 14, stuck it through the crack in the main door, and ran a clip through it. Mostly the rounds just raised dust, but a couple smacked into the side of the van. It backed off a hundred yards or so, then the firing began again. I turned to Molly. 'Grab whatever you can carry,' I said. 'It's time to run.' I gathered the cash, the fake ID, the cocaine, and a bagful of clips and stuffed them into my war bag when the rounds started punching through the metal walls about waist-high, moving back and forth, steady searching fire.
No time for explanations now. I grabbed Molly's arm, pulled her down to the floor, then dragged her out of the corn crib over to the large drain in the center of the barn, jerked off the iron grate, and stuffed her inside. The drain would give us a little cover. I went in right behind her. It was just large enough for us to slither through the old milk and cowshit, while round after round punched through the tin walls, ricocheted off the concrete floor, whirring like shrapnel until they slammed into a stall or one of the opposite walls. We bellied our way out to the abandoned drain pit behind the barn, where we rested for a few moments, then dashed for the safety of a dry wash. I leaned over the side of the wash with the Mini 14, but the black van remained hidden, pumping rounds into the barn.
'What the hell's going on?' she asked breathlessly.
'I guess whoever's been trying to kill me has decided that they don't have to be subtle anymore,' I said, and she managed a wry, smudged smile, and didn't complain as we trudged up a muddy path out of the wash, then ran toward the safety of a low rise just beyond.
Without the sun and no real sense of the lay of the ranch land, I just assumed that the wind and rain came from the northwest, so we marched straight into it as best we could across the broken terrain. We only paused for short rests and to take down electric fences in our way. In the second or third pasture, we came across an idle D-9 Cat with a root plow attached to it. I bent the barrel of the Mini 14 prying the padlock off the toolbox, then discarded it. I picked out a large screwdriver, a pair of pliers, and a roll of duct tape, then used the pliers to steal the battery.
'Okay,' she said, 'I gotta ask. Where the hell are we going?'
'You'll never guess,' I said, tucked the battery under my arm, then led the way into the storm. Neither of us looked behind us at the soft explosion and the plume of smoke that had to be my Cadillac burning to the ground.
'Goddammit, I loved that car,' I said. 'I'm gonna have the hide and hair off somebody's ass for that little deal.'
'It's just a car,' Molly said.
'You got to be kidding,' I said. 'That was my last permanent address.'
She chuckled a moment, then we moved on silently into the brisk wind.
Several hours later, convinced that the van hadn't followed us, we crossed the final ridge. The rain eased into a light mist, but the wind and scudding clouds didn't relent. Down in a shallow hollow, the catch pond gleamed like a dull silver dollar, the line shack leaning beside it.
The tires could have used some air, the Cat's battery had to be duct taped into place, but it was a classic short box GMC V-6 four-wheel-drive, the keys were in the ignition, and the engine nearly fired on the first try. It didn't take too long, though, until the tough little V-6 ran fairly smoothly. While I cleaned up as best I could in the shallow pond, Molly turned the heater on high and disposed of the spiderwebs and dirt dauber nests in the cab of the pickup. While I dried out in the blowing heater vents, Molly went to the pond to clean up.
I had just washed the mud and cowshit off my clothes with wet rags, but as I watched through the broken door of the line shack, Molly took off her clothes and waded into the pond. Standing thigh-deep in the chill wind and water as she washed her clothes, her skin darkened into a coppery, ebony shine I would have never seen without that ashen light, and when I stood naked on the edge of the pond, she raised her nose into the wind as if she could smell me coming. Her nipples were as hard as ice cubes, but inside she was as warm and soft as the ashes of a cooking fire. As I stood anchored in the soft mud of the bottom of the pond, my toes curled like talons, her long legs locked around my hips, one arm around my neck, the other pounding on my shoulders, her head back, neck arched into a quivering cord of muscle, her teeth gleaming in the feral Texas light.
Once we were back in the pickup, dressed and drying out, I removed the butterfly bandages and cleaned the faint wound, and Molly smiled and asked me, 'Two questions, old man? What the hell was that about?'
'Just about as much fun as old men get to have, lady.'
'And how the hell did you know how to find this place?'
'Tom Ben told me where it was when he told me about you,' I said. 'He thought the truck was too fine a piece of machinery to bury in the pond. And we had a little luck.'
'A little luck?'
'It's Sunday.'
'I'm sorry, but what the hell's that got to do with it?'
'I don't believe that bulldozer driver would have let me have his battery,' I said. 'But it was his day off.'
'So what do we do now?'
'Somebody got it in here,' I said, 'so we can get it out. A little air in the tires, a little gas in the tank, and a couple of stolen license plates, then we're goin' to Montan' to throw the hoolihan.'
'What the hell's that?'
'Either some kind of cowboy party or a double-looped rope. Nobody seems to be exactly sure.'
'I vote for the cowboy party part,' she said. 'But you're going to have to do something about that hat.'
'Now I've got a couple of questions for you.'
'What's that?'
'Where'd you get this truck?'
'It was waiting in the airport parking lot,' she said. 'Keys over the visor, directions to the old man's place in the glove box. I'd done all my research before I left Vegas – law school was at least good for something.'
'What did you do with the option you got Tom Ben to sign?' I asked.
She laughed, kissed me on the cheek, then whispered in my ear.
I had to laugh, then asked, 'You still have it?'
'Nope,' she said. 'When I finally got back to Vegas, I gave it to Jimmy Fish, but I think it stunk too much to do anybody any good.'
'Just the rumor of it made a lot of people uncomfortable,' I said.
'They weren't the only ones,' she said, then laughed again.
We picked up a set of stolen plates off a closed used car lot in Junction, then swapped again in Del Rio, driving straight through all the way to El Paso, where we checked into the El Camino downtown as Mr. & Mrs. Hardy P. Malvern the next afternoon. I left Molly lolling in a bubble bath while I drove across the border and parked around the corner from the Kentucky Club, leaving the keys in the truck, then had two margaritas at the Kentucky Club, and assumed the classic pickup had disappeared before I crossed the murky, shallow waters of the Rio Bravo del Norte. I called Carver D on the scrambled cell phone, asked him to check out the expired plates and the VIN on the pickup, then woke Molly long enough for room service Mexican food, and to send our clothes out to be cleaned, then we made love and slept the sleep of the newly alive until they returned our clothes the next morning. Then we took a cab to the airport where Hardy P. Malvern rented a Jeep Cherokee, and we headed north to
